(no subject)

On another message board, we've been discussing other possible Olympic sports.


zan: And, you know, since they do have fencing, why don't they have dueling? As long as we are defining 18th century ways of settling scores as sports, I think that dueling should find its way in.

nirbas: Hee. They could get sponsored by the NRA.

moppet: Lord, how do you define the winner? "Aaron Burr of the United States won gold over Alexander Hamilton of Nevis, who, um, died. But brought home the silver."

Guilty Pleasures: The tricky thing would be setting up the pairings. You can't just assign random duels. You have to insult a gentleman's honor first. They could make them all sit in a room until one guy turned to another and said, "You sir, are a scurillous brigand unfit for proper society," at which point the second guy could demand satisfaction at dawn and send their seconds off to make arrangements.

SpringBarb: I love the thought of dueling as part of the Olympics and everyone sitting in a room insulting each other, as long as they did it the proper way, i.e., entirely through written correspondence. I have images of everyone passing notes to each other and glaring.

Xinher: And they could get extra points if their letters were well written and scathing.

Daisy Duke: I can't believe they took points off that cute boy from Kazahkastan because he had a sentence fragment! It was for emphasis, dammit!

Love this

From a Washington Post webchat (emphases are mine):

Cincinnati, Ohio: You really believe Hamm's medal is tainted? Based on what? Is your point that anytime someone raises a fuss, the winner should hand over their medal? Yang wants a suspension of the rules to review his fifth rotation performance. Well, in that case: a review of his parallel bars performance would mean plus .1 for the SV and minus .2 for the fourth hold = he loses the bronze.

Did you even know that the video tape review showed clearly that his judges ignored serious mistakes--including an illegal fourth hold--in Yang's parallel bars routine? If a complete regrade is done, then Yang not only doesn't get a gold, he loses his bronze. No one in the media though is covering this part of the story, because they are too lazy to actually gather all of the relevant facts.

Instead, it's journalists like you who, by jumping on an illogical and nefarious "fairness" bandwagon, have ruined Paul Hamm's future in gymnastics. Are you not ashamed at all? Do you think about the consequences before you put finger to keypad? You all write ill-informed nonsense, and he's worked and suffered through 17 years of 6-hour training days for the benefit of your inane opinions about whether his medal was tainted? Yang and his coaches should be ashamed for pursuing the protests after they reviewed the videos showing other clear mistakes. The FIG should be ashamed. The media should be ashamed. Paul Hamm should be proud.

This is brilliant. I especially love "inane opinions." Most of those weighing in on this know nothing about gymnastics. I don't care about your opinion--everyone has an opinion--don't air it unless you can defend it intelligently. The one thing I'd change is the criticism of Yang--I place the blame squarely at the feet of the SK federation.

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